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Loading... Waking Giantby David S. Reynolds
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Reynolds examines the chaotic constantly changing years between 1815 to 1848. It’s a bunch of stories wrapped up in one. It’s a fun political story of Andrew Jackson, the first everyman’s president. It seems he was the first president to actually campaign for the job, and the populace loved him. Reynold’s also writes about the cultural, social, intellectual and artistic currents running through the nation. Many different things were happening all at once. President James Monroe observed that a growing network of canals and turnpikes and the development of the steamboat were helping stitch a country together, even as other Americans, saw the division of the Union unless it were bound together by something like the Erie Canal. Countless utopian movements popped up across the country, along with movements to help the poor, heal the sick and assist the deaf, even as Native Americans were forcibly marched to their deaths along the Trail of Tears and plans were being made to ship free blacks off to Africa, or elsewhere. It’s got a little bit of everything, and it’s a fun read. (  ) susanamper | Dec 14, 2008 |   no reviews | add a review
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America experienced unprecedented expansion and turmoil in the years between 1815 and 1848. In Waking Giant, Bancroft Prize-winning historian and literary critic David S. Reynolds illuminates the period's exciting political story as well as the fascinating social and cultural movements that influenced it. He casts fresh light on Andrew Jackson, who redefined the presidency, along with John Quincy Adams and James K. Polk, who expanded the nation's territory and strengthened its position internationally.
Waking Giant captures the turbulence of a democracy caught in the throes of the controversy over slavery, the rise of capitalism, and the birth of urbanization. Reynolds reveals unknown dimensions of the Second Great Awakening with its sects, cults, and self-styled prophets. He brings to life the reformers, abolitionists, and temperance advocates who struggled to correct America's worst social ills. He uncovers the political roots of some of America's greatest authors and artists, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe to Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand, and he reveals the shocking phenomena that marked the age: bloody duels and violent mobs, P. T. Barnum's freaks and all-seeing mesmerists, polygamous prophets and wealthy prostitutes, table-lifting spiritualists and rabble-rousing feminists. All were crucial to the political and social ferment that led to the Civil War.
Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Waking Giant is a brilliant chronicle of America's vibrant and tumultuous rise.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400)
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